I'm not really that interested in the article, but thank you OP for linking to the lite version of CNN. It loaded so fast and didn't have any autoplaying videos.
But related to the article- We have multiple continents that are significantly curtailing their output due to the pandemic, and it will last for a while yet. I'm a little surprised to see that they think Europe will contract by only 8.3%. That might make sense if it were just Europe being affected by the pandemic but all of their trading partners are affected too. I don't think they've accounted for how the entire world going down at once is going to effect the EU as a multiplicative effect, not an additive effect.
It's a reasonable concern, but a look at the report indicates they seem to have attempted to take into account the effects on the EU's main global trading partners. You can get the report here.
The report claims that their economy will take a 17% hit in the first half of 2020 (it has already taken this hit, but it takes a while for the accounting to shake out). And they're claiming that the yearly hit will only be 8.3%. I understand that they are trying to take a lot of things into account, but this forecast is too optimistic. Europe won't bounce back that much in H2, because their recovery will only happen at the pace of everyone else's recovery.
Nothing proves that a "real" second wave will come with a similar lockdown to the first one. The first lockdown was catastrophic for the economy of some countries and didn't really help anything at all in regard to the health (best example is France/Spain vs. Germany). It seems (some) countries have learnt the lessons and now apply successfully limited restrictions (masks, social distancing, limited gathering, etc.) and this shall be the sweet spot for limiting contamination while not impeding further the economy. Arguably one shall not, again, underestimate governments for self-sabotaging themselves, but we can hope to see more reasonable measures being undertaken.
> didn't really help anything at all in regard to the health (best example is France/Spain vs. Germany)
I believe France and Spain were simply already much further on the wave than Germany when they enacted the lockdown. Without the lockdown, things would have probably been much worse.
Germany managed the outbreak better because it was able to do 5x to 10x more testing than any other country, due to the global medical testing industry being mostly located in Germany. This enabled them to closely track the progress of the virus and employ targeted tactical lockdowns. Germany did lock down, just not as completely. Spain and France didn't have that option, they could only employ blanket lockdowns.
Of course now we have ramped up our global testing capacity and German style tactical lockdowns are becoming more feasible, but they aren't a magic wand. Even Germany is forecast to suffer a 7% hit to it's economy through 2020 while the hit to Spain may be double that. So hopefully further lockdowns wont be as blanket and damaging as the first wave, but they will still have an impact.
If you think the lockdowns didn't have any effect on transmission of the virus, how do you explain the reduction in cases during the lockdowns?
> Europe won't bounce back that much in H2, because their recovery will only happen at the pace of everyone else's recovery.
The EU does have the worlds' largest internal market, though. I am not an economist, but would expect this dampens the effect of economies elsewhere breaking down.
Our government has explicitly said we won't have any hope of returning to our economic status quo ante until such time as the rest of the world is ready to import our exports.
So I selfishly ask you all to wash your hands and keep your distances, please.
Hand washing is a must. German studies have found people infected each other passing salt shakers and lighters. Whilst we can't tell what vector the virus took, the lighter incident happened outside AFAIK, so likely it was from hand contact.
Deeper than expected by the clueless (or lying) idiots who run the ECB and other government organizations in charge of making fake predictions for the betterment of the populace.
We've been hearing "worse than expected" for over a decade now. CNN still doesn't get it. Or maybe they simply knowingly spread these obviously fake news.
Growth expected to return by 2022 then? European oil providers supplies were supposed to be contracting by 2028 according to data from Rystad, before the pandemic, mostly because of below ground issues (and with very, VERY optimistic previsions concerning above ground issues imo). So anyway, Covid or not, European industrial production will peak this decade.
Times will be harder and harder for a lot of people.
Bad economy might lead to wars and conflicts. But if it kills a lot of people, I guess that's good for the climate in the long game. Wars are also great for the economy assuming you survive.
Wow, the outlook for the next decade is fantastic.
I don't know your age, but I've been rather worried about the fact that almost all my < 30 years old friends seem to be some degree of 'doomer'. Whether it's climate, the economy (and the prospects of retirement), or even just expectations if what their next few decades will be like.
Obviously I don't just worry that they feel this way, but also that they probably have a good reason for feeling this way, but either way it's worrying.
Wouldn't a move to renewable / greener energy sources (I realize that in Europe oil is used in transportation and heating mostly instead of direct electricity generation) remove the necessary connection between oil demand and industrial production?
COVID is the massive elephant in the room that this article doesn't fully address. Everyone is very focused on GDP, but this is merely a single metric. What about new cases, patients hospitalized, patients dying from COVID? These have dramatic repercussions for economic policy, and it seems the countries doing the best right now economically are those who handle COVID the best.
Global warming is the same issue. We don't seem to realize that the economy kinda sorta depends entirely on the environment, just like the economy kinda sorta depends entirely on public health.
A thing I've thought is really interesting on how the news is covering Coronavirus here in the US is they like to talk about all the economic harm going on in the US and then they blame it on the government response rather than the pandemic itself.
I've heard more than one news piece where they imply that Europe and Asia will be somehow spared from the economic fallout of putting their countries on lockdown for months on end. Then in the next piece they'll talk about how the US unemployment rate is off the charts and find a way to blame the Trump administration for it.
The economy is suffering because we slammed on the brakes in what (at least at the time) seemed like a prudent measure to avoid a worse fate. Now we have to pay the price for that. Choices have consequences.
Well, a country will have less economic fallout if it manages to keep SARS-Cov-II at bay. Trump managed to evoke the collateral damage of a lockdown without the full benefits. And that is on the government.
> Trump managed to evoke the collateral damage of a lockdown without the full benefits.
Besides the fact that the Federal government doesn't actually have the authority to invoke a lockdown, and it was done on a state by state basis, yes the Federal government did advocate for it.
As to the benefits of the lockdowns as performed in various countries, I think it really remains to be seen how badly the US will be affected vs the rest of the world.
As of right now, yes, the US looks particularly bad in terms of the number of infections / deaths. But it's also an area the size of Europe with the vast majority of the deaths restricted to New England.
I wonder how things would look if you compared individual states to European countries. For example, here in Iowa, we're at I think 700 deaths and 30,000 confirmed cases. That doesn't seem too catastrophic to me.
> In that case, Iowa is doing very badly for cases/1M.
This is interesting to me. I don't personally know anyone who has caught Coronavirus, much less been hospitalized or died from it.
If this is average or worse than average, it really makes me wonder why we've gotten so worked up about the re-opening. I assumed based on the way it's covered on the news that people were dropping like flies in other parts of the world.
I'm really not sure if the cases/1M is a reasonable figure to compare.
At least between European countries, there have been quite different approaches to testing -- who gets tested varies depending on symptoms, perceived risk to themselves, risk to others, and availability of testing.
I don't personally know anyone here in Denmark that has tested positive. Two people I know know someone who has tested positive here. Many hotspots seem to be limited to quite small communities -- a single building, a single care home for the elderly, or a single food processing factory might have tens of cases (even deaths for the care home), so it's not so surprising that I'm unaware of anyone infected.
Even ignoring the lockdown, there are a myriad of things that the federal govt could have done vastly better, yet failed or did the worst possible thing.
Preparation: not only failed to prepare, but dismantled agencies, fired/left empty key posts, de-funded key programs.
When first briefed on the threat, not only failed to start steps to stockpile key resources such as masks, activity reduced stockpiles by helping 3M sell overseas.
Reaction: Ignored, then actively downplayed the seriousness of the threat for months, silenced scientists, actively promoted false & sometimes deadly 'cures', actively turned mask-wearing from a simple & useful precaution to a partisan political statement, claimed science-based measures were opposition party ideas to tank the economy.
Actively impeded states from getting necessary gear - literally having federal agents seize shipments at loading docks, still unaccounted for =my state literally borrowed an NGL team airplane to fetch shipments of PPE from overseas so it could get to hospitals.
Ongoing: Deliberately rediced & slowed testing capability because the leader thinks that having more positive test results will hurt his reelection chances - would literally prefer people go undiagnosed & untreated than hurt his campaign.
Policy now seems to be turning ti "just live with it".
Nevermind the failure of leadership on the lockdown - every federal decision on this topic has, at best, focused improving on superficial appearance for the person occupying the president's chair, even if it actively undermines actual results. It is a rolling disaster, now exponentially growing again.
This pandemic will be alot worse in economic terms than predicted. So far the only bright spot will be deaths seem to have really dropped, but death is a low bar compared to having severe chronic symptoms after infection. Alot of people have really shut down spending(my family reduced it by 50%) Expect international travel/tourism to be completely shutdown as well as a majority of restaurants and bars until prb early 2021. Sports and concerts also. That is a considerable chunk of the economy. Will a majority of these restaurants even exist next year? A few assumptions that have been proven wrong with covid-19:
1. The virus will subside in the summer like the flu does. Based on cases in the US and other areas (sans Europe) skyrocketing right now this is absolutely not true, forget a 2nd wave we have a growing mountain of a 1st wave hitting the US/Americas now.
2. Children are not really affected by covid. Israel had to shut its schools down after cases there were jumping, in addition kawasaki disease seems to be prevalent in a higher percentage of infected children than normally seen.
3. Antibodies will offer protection against covid-19 after being infected. This too has been disproved although the jury is not out yet. Studies have seen neutralizing antibodies stay in a persons system for about 2-3 months. There are other ways the body knows how to fight an infection so this is not definitive yet.[3]
They are, but many of them have people only seated outside, and in places where it was almost impossible to get a table, nowadays it is relatively easy to get one.
Also plenty of them have decided to just stay closed as the measures to put in place were too much for their usual business costs.
This is not correct, but it would mean we'd need a novel type of vaccine, one that works differently than merely stimulating the body's immune response in the regular way.
Of course it's correct. If the immune system can't learn immunity from the full virus itself, virus fragments or a weakened relative won't suffice either.
As for developing a novel type of vaccine? Developing any vaccine within an acceptable timeframe would be a minor miracle. To expect a breakthrough like that is plain delusional.
> If the immune system can't learn immunity from the full virus itself, virus fragments or a weakened relative won't suffice either.
There are currently some 8-10 different kinds of vaccine for COVID-19 in development right now, and only two of those are based on virus fragments or weakened relatives.
It possible to induce temporary immunity, which would be adequate as a vaccine during pandemic, although annoying because we'd have to keep taking boosters. The history of this goes back >100 years, it is hardly "breakthrough" level.
Some R&D is towards gene-editing or other means of RNA/DNA transcription to cause the body to produce passive immunity antibodies continuously, rather than one-off infusion. That would be breakthrough level, but it's not so implausible that "we might as well give up and accept the inevitable now" and let millions die and millions more suffer the disabilities.
If these fail, regular antibody infusions or other therepeutics may be required. Not a vaccine, but similar in practical effect while being more expensive. We might as well give up if the US insurance system is in charge of that.
Are you seeing that people are taking that message to heart? Those around me don’t seem to be changing their attitudes. So, I don’t see any reason why things will change long term.
I'm german and I remember people being pessimistic naysayers in the banking crash 2008, the "refugee crisis" in 2015, the "climate crisis" last year and many times before that. Apparantly a year without a near end of the world is a wasted one.
The single most appropriate quote in these times (it comes from 4chan of all damn places) is, and always will be: "Your impending sense of doom is nothing but emotional residue - there is nothing wrong. Even when something is wrong, nothing is wrong. You deal with problems as they arise, no big deal."
This is the kind of attitude that causes the worst kinds of things to happen though. With no resistance, the people who want to take advantage of a situation will do so. This is what causes wars, this is why climate change will be our destruction.
There's one crisis in this set that's real and we're doing way too little about it (climate crisis). Probably the biggest harm from short term panickng about these smaller things is taking away attention from it.
Exactly! Short-term panicking is the worst thing to do.
I definitely think the climate change is man-made. I also think it is impossible to realy predict its environmental, ecological and social consequences on a global scale.
By listening to those, who try to nudge us into panic mode, we neglect calm long-term strategies that would improve our lives over time.
Imho, this applies to every "immediate threats" that are regulary propagated by (social) media.
I don't even want to know how hard Spain will be hit. The country was kind of recovering from the 2008 crisis which was not pretty. Unemployment was still high before Covid, around 14% down from 26% which was not a good number but things were going forward.
Now this new crisis will be 5 times worse, at least in terms of GDP. In 2008 the GDP went down around 2,5% now it'll go down more than 12%. Madness. Around 50.000 small businesses have already shut down and thousands more are barely surviving. And now the government is going to increase some taxes. Taxes which were supposed to affect the rich but guess what, they won't.
I'm pretty concerned about several people I know with small/family businesses.
53 comments
[ 38.1 ms ] story [ 807 ms ] threadBut related to the article- We have multiple continents that are significantly curtailing their output due to the pandemic, and it will last for a while yet. I'm a little surprised to see that they think Europe will contract by only 8.3%. That might make sense if it were just Europe being affected by the pandemic but all of their trading partners are affected too. I don't think they've accounted for how the entire world going down at once is going to effect the EU as a multiplicative effect, not an additive effect.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/economic-per...
I dont know about similar lockdowns, but its reasonable to be concerned about a 2nd winter wave. We seen what happens once winter time comes in Brazil
I believe France and Spain were simply already much further on the wave than Germany when they enacted the lockdown. Without the lockdown, things would have probably been much worse.
Of course now we have ramped up our global testing capacity and German style tactical lockdowns are becoming more feasible, but they aren't a magic wand. Even Germany is forecast to suffer a 7% hit to it's economy through 2020 while the hit to Spain may be double that. So hopefully further lockdowns wont be as blanket and damaging as the first wave, but they will still have an impact.
If you think the lockdowns didn't have any effect on transmission of the virus, how do you explain the reduction in cases during the lockdowns?
The EU does have the worlds' largest internal market, though. I am not an economist, but would expect this dampens the effect of economies elsewhere breaking down.
So I selfishly ask you all to wash your hands and keep your distances, please.
"We conclude that wearing of face masks in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent interhuman transmission"
[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857
We've been hearing "worse than expected" for over a decade now. CNN still doesn't get it. Or maybe they simply knowingly spread these obviously fake news.
Times will be harder and harder for a lot of people.
Wow, the outlook for the next decade is fantastic.
Obviously I don't just worry that they feel this way, but also that they probably have a good reason for feeling this way, but either way it's worrying.
Plenty of people are still not able to work, and it is not like everyone can work from home.
I've heard more than one news piece where they imply that Europe and Asia will be somehow spared from the economic fallout of putting their countries on lockdown for months on end. Then in the next piece they'll talk about how the US unemployment rate is off the charts and find a way to blame the Trump administration for it.
The economy is suffering because we slammed on the brakes in what (at least at the time) seemed like a prudent measure to avoid a worse fate. Now we have to pay the price for that. Choices have consequences.
Besides the fact that the Federal government doesn't actually have the authority to invoke a lockdown, and it was done on a state by state basis, yes the Federal government did advocate for it.
As to the benefits of the lockdowns as performed in various countries, I think it really remains to be seen how badly the US will be affected vs the rest of the world.
As of right now, yes, the US looks particularly bad in terms of the number of infections / deaths. But it's also an area the size of Europe with the vast majority of the deaths restricted to New England.
I wonder how things would look if you compared individual states to European countries. For example, here in Iowa, we're at I think 700 deaths and 30,000 confirmed cases. That doesn't seem too catastrophic to me.
- https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ("Europe" is all Europe, not just the European Union. That's 747 million people.)
- https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
In that case, Iowa is doing very badly for cases/1M. I don't know if the comparison is fair, it might depend on who is tested.
For deaths/1M, it's somewhere around the European average.
Some European countries are very densely populated, like Belgium, the Netherlands, others less. Though much of Europe is as dense as New England.
This is interesting to me. I don't personally know anyone who has caught Coronavirus, much less been hospitalized or died from it.
If this is average or worse than average, it really makes me wonder why we've gotten so worked up about the re-opening. I assumed based on the way it's covered on the news that people were dropping like flies in other parts of the world.
At least between European countries, there have been quite different approaches to testing -- who gets tested varies depending on symptoms, perceived risk to themselves, risk to others, and availability of testing.
I don't personally know anyone here in Denmark that has tested positive. Two people I know know someone who has tested positive here. Many hotspots seem to be limited to quite small communities -- a single building, a single care home for the elderly, or a single food processing factory might have tens of cases (even deaths for the care home), so it's not so surprising that I'm unaware of anyone infected.
Preparation: not only failed to prepare, but dismantled agencies, fired/left empty key posts, de-funded key programs.
When first briefed on the threat, not only failed to start steps to stockpile key resources such as masks, activity reduced stockpiles by helping 3M sell overseas.
Reaction: Ignored, then actively downplayed the seriousness of the threat for months, silenced scientists, actively promoted false & sometimes deadly 'cures', actively turned mask-wearing from a simple & useful precaution to a partisan political statement, claimed science-based measures were opposition party ideas to tank the economy.
Actively impeded states from getting necessary gear - literally having federal agents seize shipments at loading docks, still unaccounted for =my state literally borrowed an NGL team airplane to fetch shipments of PPE from overseas so it could get to hospitals.
Ongoing: Deliberately rediced & slowed testing capability because the leader thinks that having more positive test results will hurt his reelection chances - would literally prefer people go undiagnosed & untreated than hurt his campaign.
Policy now seems to be turning ti "just live with it".
Nevermind the failure of leadership on the lockdown - every federal decision on this topic has, at best, focused improving on superficial appearance for the person occupying the president's chair, even if it actively undermines actual results. It is a rolling disaster, now exponentially growing again.
1. The virus will subside in the summer like the flu does. Based on cases in the US and other areas (sans Europe) skyrocketing right now this is absolutely not true, forget a 2nd wave we have a growing mountain of a 1st wave hitting the US/Americas now.
2. Children are not really affected by covid. Israel had to shut its schools down after cases there were jumping, in addition kawasaki disease seems to be prevalent in a higher percentage of infected children than normally seen.
3. Antibodies will offer protection against covid-19 after being infected. This too has been disproved although the jury is not out yet. Studies have seen neutralizing antibodies stay in a persons system for about 2-3 months. There are other ways the body knows how to fight an infection so this is not definitive yet.[3]
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/07/coronavirus...
[2] - https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
[3] - https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/chinese-...
The majority of bars and restaurants are back open in Germany.
Though I think the parent was talking about worldwide numbers which I have no idea about.
Also plenty of them have decided to just stay closed as the measures to put in place were too much for their usual business costs.
As for developing a novel type of vaccine? Developing any vaccine within an acceptable timeframe would be a minor miracle. To expect a breakthrough like that is plain delusional.
There are currently some 8-10 different kinds of vaccine for COVID-19 in development right now, and only two of those are based on virus fragments or weakened relatives.
It possible to induce temporary immunity, which would be adequate as a vaccine during pandemic, although annoying because we'd have to keep taking boosters. The history of this goes back >100 years, it is hardly "breakthrough" level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_induction_of_immuni...
Some R&D is towards gene-editing or other means of RNA/DNA transcription to cause the body to produce passive immunity antibodies continuously, rather than one-off infusion. That would be breakthrough level, but it's not so implausible that "we might as well give up and accept the inevitable now" and let millions die and millions more suffer the disabilities.
If these fail, regular antibody infusions or other therepeutics may be required. Not a vaccine, but similar in practical effect while being more expensive. We might as well give up if the US insurance system is in charge of that.
Lots of aircraft still parked (~15k).
The single most appropriate quote in these times (it comes from 4chan of all damn places) is, and always will be: "Your impending sense of doom is nothing but emotional residue - there is nothing wrong. Even when something is wrong, nothing is wrong. You deal with problems as they arise, no big deal."
By listening to those, who try to nudge us into panic mode, we neglect calm long-term strategies that would improve our lives over time.
Imho, this applies to every "immediate threats" that are regulary propagated by (social) media.
Now this new crisis will be 5 times worse, at least in terms of GDP. In 2008 the GDP went down around 2,5% now it'll go down more than 12%. Madness. Around 50.000 small businesses have already shut down and thousands more are barely surviving. And now the government is going to increase some taxes. Taxes which were supposed to affect the rich but guess what, they won't.
I'm pretty concerned about several people I know with small/family businesses.